Quote from: Haffrung;596637If care, professionalism, generous resources, and good taste are evident in the physical design and production of an RPG book, chances are those qualities will be evident in the game content. Not always. But it's likely.

Not really.

Quote from: Haffrung;596637If care, professionalism, generous resources, and good taste are evident in the physical design and production of an RPG book, chances are those qualities will be evident in the game content. Not always. But it's likely.

Sorry, man, but I don't see it.

A book has to be really ugly for me to be repulsed by it, and conversely, has to have really really cool-looking art for me to be attracted to it for that reason. "Cool-looking" means inspired, weird, ridiculous, comprehensive, or perhaps obsessive – not just slick. Anything inbetween I don't take into consideration. Gloss is unimportant.

Quote from: The Butcher;596600Ceterum censeo Vocatio Cthulhorum gallico esse translatus.

Mea sententia exacte!

OT: Substance over style anytime, although substance AND style would of course be preferred.
For example I find Artesia the best of both worlds: beautiful book, great content.
On the other hand: Nobilis looks great, but as a system...erm...well, it wasn't my cup of tea.
ICE's Cyberspace on the other hand I find lacking in the style department, but great regarding the substance.

Of course, style is able to create sales in the short run (and maybe even in the long run, if the product isn't REALLY crappy): one cannot underestimate its effect.

I want to be on the Substance Uber Alles train, but I have to admit that I only read "pretty" comic books.

While I obviously like high production values, I have to admit that "battlelords of the 23rf century" has some fairly low production values but generally is worth what you pay for it in entertainment value. lots of typos, misspellings, poor grammer and plain old wrong words being used, but it's a lot of fun anyway.

The art varies wildly from cave painting level to quite fine, actually.

Eh.  They're a trade-off.

I remember having all of the 1st edition L5R books.  They were not bad in terms of production values, but they weren't amazing.  They were also very cheap at 30 bucks for the hardback core with so-so binding and 15-20 dollars for the thin, softcover splats and supplements.

I currently have the corebook of 4th edition L5R.  Just the core.  It is a work of art in terms of production values, and the conscious attempt to mimic the design of Japanese prints on the page works exceptionally well.  But I can't afford all of the books because the core alone cost me 60 dollars and, with one or two exceptions, the books are forty dollars and up.  To be clear, I have about the same levels of disposable income then as now.

So it's a toss-up for me between having a gorgeous book that I can only afford very sparingly and a so-so book, the releases of which I can pick up as they come out.